1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to financial transactions and more particularly to a passphrase account identifier for use in a financial network.
2. Related Art
In direct (face-to-face) or online financial transactions, customers search for and purchase products and services from a merchant. In the case of online shopping, transactions are conducted through electronic communications with online merchants over electronic networks, such as the Internet. During the course of these transactions, customers may provide payment in various ways including, for example, credit cards, electronic fund transfers, and other payment techniques offered by payment providers.
Typically, when online shopping at a particular website, customers select items to purchase by clicking on a link for a specific item. When done shopping, the customer proceeds to a checkout page to provide some form of payment information such as credit card information for the selected items.
Similarly, during checkout in a face-to-face transaction the customer is typically required to provide some form of payment information such as credit card information for the selected items. As the customer continues shopping and is ready to purchase items from other merchant websites or from other merchants directly, the process of providing payment information such as credit card information to complete the purchase transaction is repeated.
In this regard, multiple funding instruments including credit cards such as merchant specific credit cards, as well as, credit cards to satisfy a variety of accounting purposes including one or more cards for business related purchases and one or more cards for personal related purchases may be carried by the customer. Accordingly, the necessity to retrieve a particular card is often cumbersome and inconvenient, while trying to remember and recall the sixteen-digit credit card number so that the card number and its associated credit card information may be verified and authorized is extremely difficult and more often than not results in an error in card authorization as the card numbers are not accurately recalled and communicated to the merchant system.
Accordingly, there exits a need for a passphrase account identifier for use as a funding instrument number substitute in a financial network.